On April 19, 2020, the film “Coach,” directed by Danila Kozlovsky, will open in wide release. The film will be the first full-length directorial work for the popular actor. He, in a trio with Andrei Zolotarev and Sergei Chetverukhin, wrote the script.
Kozlovsky himself (“5 Brides” (2011), “Legend No. 17” (2012), “Spy” (2012)) noted that he knows a lot about football from books published by legendary athletes and coaches. He personally communicated with referees, players, coaches, commentators, doctors and athlete managers, and always follows football matches and the Champions League.
The release date for Coach Danila Kozlovsky is planned ahead of the 2020 FIFA World Cup.
The center of attention is Russian national team striker Yuri Stoleshnikov. During a friendly match with the Romanian national team players, he made a mistake. He failed to score a penalty, and therefore the Russian team was forced to accept a loss with the score 0:1.
Against the backdrop of these events, a real scandal broke out. The football player had to say goodbye to his playing career. Without hesitation, he moved to live in another city, where he began working as a coach at the Meteor football club. In his new position, he rethinks his life, he realizes that he needs to believe in himself and move only forward. Varvara, who holds the position of rehabilitation physician on the club’s staff, helps him with this.
Actors of the film Coach
Alexander Ilyin
Olga Zueva
Dmitry Chebotarev
Vitaly Andreev
Danila Kozlovsky
Maria Lobanova
Askar Ilyasov
Irina Gorbacheva
Andrey Smolyakov
Alan Gatagov
Alexander Oblasov
Dmitry Sychev
Vladimir Ilyin
Igor Gordin
Pavel Vorozhtsov
Vilen Babichev
Vladislav Khatazhenkov
Victor Verzhbitsky
The main role in the football drama “Coach” was played by Danila Kozlovsky. He played football player Yuri Stoleshnikov, who was forced to pull himself together after experiencing a failure in his career and begin a new period in life. Together with his new players, he not only discovered his talent as a coach, but also taught the children to play football professionally.
Olga Zueva played Varya, a rehabilitation doctor for the Meteor team. The actress could previously be seen in film projects: “Salt” (2010), “Orange is the New Black” (2013-2017). Stoleshnikov will be played by actor Dima Vyatkin as a child, and his father will be played by Andrei Smolyakov.
Many famous Russian actors also played in the film: Vladimir Ilyin as Berger, Irina Gorbacheva, Viktor Verzhbitsky, Maria Lobanova, Igor Gordin, Alexander Ilyin, Alexander Oblasov, Dmitry Sychev and others.
Interesting Facts
- Russian coach Leonid Slutsky acted as a consultant for the film “Coach”.
- During filming, actor Kozlovsky noted that he became even more interested in football and changed his clothing style to sports. Initially, he thought that he would act as an actor and producer of the project, but later he also became a co-author of the script and director.
- The film was shot with the support of the Russian Football Union, the Ministry of Sports, Vitaly Mutko, and the Cinema Fund.
- 450 people were involved in the extras.
- Filming took place from April 24 to July 6, 2020. They took place in Moscow, Novorossiysk and Krasnodar, London.
- Kozlovsky has experience playing football players; in 2005, he played in the film “Garpastum”, directed by Alexey German Jr.
- During the filming, the group wore jackets with the symbols of the Meteor club. This was a special move by the directors to ensure that even random people fit into the scene of the storyline well. In total, 5,500 sports outfits were sewn for filming, and 500 pieces were also used. balls.
- 300,000 football players participated in the casting for the film "Coach". 200 people were selected. Among those who passed were Alan Gatagov and Dmitry Sychev. The actors and football players lived in a strict sports regime for 2 months, and Kozlovsky worked out with them.
- The plot included scenes at the Meteor base. These episodes were filmed at the Central Stadium of Novorossiysk. In total, 6 stadiums were used in the film: Krasnodar, Otkritie Arena, and Khimki Arena.
- Olga Zueva auditioned for the role of Varvara, but Kozlovsky was against her candidacy. While he was looking for another actress, Olga made changes to the image of her character. Varya became more daring and eccentric, and therefore Zueva, like no one else, approached this role.
- Zueva and Kozlovsky have already played on the same set in the film “On the Area,” which will be released in 2020.
Danila Kozlovsky: “Coach” is a movie not only about football. The audience will understand this
On April 19, the release of “Trainer,” the debut film by Danila Kozlovsky, will begin in Russian cinemas. A Soviet Sport correspondent attended the press screening of the film and, among other journalists, asked the leading actor, director and producer of the film several questions.
“THE WORK OF A COACH IS CINEMATOGRAPHIC AND ATTRACTIVE”
– How did the idea to make a movie about Russian football come about? – It all started with a simple acting desire to play a football coach. In general, I am a big fan of this sport, and since childhood, like many, many people, I have loved this game. In addition to what is happening on the field, I have always been attracted by what is happening on the sidelines. This is the over-emotional dramatic behavior of the coach, when they seem to be unable to do anything, and they are trying to somehow influence what is happening right in front of their eyes. This has always been interesting to me as a fan. Not to mention, it's entertaining, cinematic, and engaging.
Then the question arose: where to play a football coach? At that time, no one offered me anything like this. Then I told my friend Pavel Ruminov about my idea, with whom we had already made the film “Status: Free” at that time. He tells me: listen, well, we need to start writing somehow. How to do this? He showed it to me. Pavel sent me a certain text, which became a powerful creative impulse; I began to turn it into a kind of extended graphomaniac synopsis. I wrote it thanks to my girlfriend Olga Zueva. Next, my co-producer Peter Anurov and I began preparing the film. That's all.
– Football is more than 150 years old, cinema is more than 120. Why is so little filmed about football? – In my opinion, this is due to the complexity of production, because filming football is not an extremely simple thing. Because everyone knows how to play it, everyone has their own ideas about the game. It's always difficult to find a balance in film between the sport and what happens outside of it. It’s interesting what makes people invest themselves in the game, what makes them live the minutes of a match with such passion: love, hate, despair, admire their work.
Any good sports drama is not always about sports. For example, “The Man Who Changed Everything,” which is not about baseball at all, although the sport is certainly shown. Or the same “We are one team.” These are all pictures more about people than about sports.
– Sitting on the stands, almost everyone knows how to play football. What is it like to do it on the field? – Yes, I myself recently watched the match between Roma and Barcelona (3:0) and gave so much advice! And before filming the film, it seemed to me that I was generally the number one expert. But on the football field - I play twice a week - I fail at many things. And playing, directing, arguing and telling football players how to act was, to put it mildly, interesting.
“SYCHEV, GATAGOV AND SAVIN WORKED AT NIGHT AND IN THE FROST”
– Weren’t you afraid of a harsh reaction from the fans? - Of course they were afraid. I couldn't help but wonder how "Coach" would be received. But on the other hand, if you believe in something, then take it and do it! You shouldn't be afraid of anything. This is what our incredible team did. In addition to the actors and crew, I would especially like to mention the director of photography Fyodor Lyass, only he could film football so well.
Moreover, Fedor supported me at a difficult moment. Before the actual start of filming, we almost signed an agreement with English television producers who produce the best advertisements and documentaries about the giants of European football. But at some point they refused to send us their vision for filming in fear that we would start filming everything ourselves. And at the same time, we experimented and at some point realized that it was even more interesting. Fedor said: “Let’s film it ourselves, we don’t need anyone.”
- It was difficult to? – The specificity of football scenes is a special thing. Here thanks to the editing director Maria Likhacheva. She is amazingly daring and impudent in the good sense of the word, without references to schools and “how it should be done.” She supported almost any of my crazy proposals, developed it in every possible way, and defended something.
Articles | “Coach” by Danila Kozlovsky is a cool tale about Russian football. And that's not the main thing
Well, without whom we would not have filmed the football scenes at all, it would be without Roman Voronov. He watched a huge number of matches, we sat with him for a month and a half, without getting out, at Mosfilm and pieced together the first football match.
– The film featured not only actors, but also real football players: for example, Soslan and Alan Gatagov and Dmitry Sychev. How did they behave on set? – The experience of working with professional football players is amazing. Firstly, it’s hellish work - working hard for 12 hours, performing complex elements, when your crazy director wants the balls to fly, not computer ones, but for you to hit the crossbars, crossbars, and “nines.”
He came up on the set and asked actor Dmitry Chebotarev to hit the crossbar. He looked at me like I was crazy, but he tried. We spent several hours on this, almost completely destroyed the fantastic clearing of the Krasnodar stadium in this place, but he hit the crossbar!
And this is how the Gatagovs, Sychev, Renat Sokolov worked (now the goalkeeper of Veles in the PFL - editor's note). This is how Evgeny Savin worked, who made 28 doubles of the fish kick. Only after take 16-17, when I realized that he was swimming a little, did he say, “If it’s not too much trouble, shall we rest for a couple of minutes?” They all believed in our story and wanted everything to work out. That's why they worked at night, in the cold.
– Tell us about some funny episode. – The professional Tambov team came to us, for which we thank them very much. Thanks to the club and the city, we largely wrote this script, because we went there and lived with the team. We had a unique opportunity to communicate with football players on forbidden, rather personal and sensitive topics. And I wanted them to be in the movies.
So they flew to us after the match, I think, with Baltika, and head coach Andrei Talalaev came up to me and said: “Well, what’s there? We’ll do everything quickly now, don’t worry.” I asked him to explain to the team that it might be necessary to do three, five, seven takes of one combination. Well, Talalaev said: “Yes, I beg you, we will quickly set up here, back and forth, the simplest combinations.” An hour and a half passes - the guys can’t do it, because they need to combine three to five cameras so that everything comes together: the players are in the right place, the trajectory of the ball, etc. We deliberately did not resort to computer graphics. I don't believe it is possible to draw a real ball and net.
In the end, two or three hours passed, the guys were wet, tired, and could barely drag their feet in knee-deep mud. And our actors are already used to it, they’ve been doing this for six months, and they come up like, “Now let’s pull this “Tambov”, we’ll play with them after filming.” I’m talking about the stress that everyone experienced during filming, but showed patience and courage. Our actor’s vein burst during the filming of the match, it looked scary, but everything turned out okay. With such desperation and dedication, everyone worked for many, many hours without pause.
Exactly a year ago we started filming “COACH”, and today, in a few hours we will play the premiere.
Film crew: You are the best team in the world! How I love you! Go Meteor! Posted by Danilakozlovsky (@danilakozlovsky) Apr 12, 2020 at 7:32 am PDT
“THE KRASNODAR STADIUM WAS AWESOME”
– Why do the FNL club Meteor from Novorossiysk and Moscow Spartak play at the Krasnodar stadium in the final match of the Russian Cup? - First of all, it’s beautiful. And secondly, I believe that this is the best stadium in our country in terms of infrastructure and cinema. We looked at many stadiums, they are all beautiful and majestic in their own way, but Krasnodar amazed me. As soon as I entered the bowl and the lights and music were turned on, I was stunned and realized that I wanted to shoot the final scene only here.
As for the opponents, we can say we guessed right. The team from the first division will definitely play in the final of the Russian Cup this year. And, most likely, with Spartak. When experts read the script, they didn’t really believe in the veracity of such an ending. It turns out that this is quite possible.
– Do you hide the budget of the film? Was the government involved in the making of the film? – There are no secrets here, the budget is 390 million rubles. Of course the state participated. At first, 60 million were allocated for the development of the film, then, when the project grew, we came up with so many things for ourselves that later the VGTRK holding and the Three Te studio also helped us.
World Cup 2018 #coach #coachfilm
Posted by Danilakozlovsky (@danilakozlovsky) March 24, 2020 at 2:32 PDT
“I WILL BE FOOTING FOR THE RUSSIA TEAM AND SCREAMING til I’m hoarse”
– Is it a coincidence that “Coach” is released before the World Cup? - No. When we started preparing the film, it was important for us what we would base our further marketing campaign on. We had to think about this even before filming, because making a movie is one problem, but convincing the viewer to go see your film with a very difficult topic for our country is another. We wanted to come out before the World Cup, when the whole country would be waiting for this unique event. It is a great honor for Russia to host this kind of competition. And when else in our lifetime will there be a home world championship? We had the ambition to become the main film before the World Cup, although, in essence, this film is not about football. I think the audience will understand this.
– What feelings should viewers come away with after watching “Coach”? – For me, as a director, it was important to show a human story, where the sport is not so important. It’s just that football for me is one of the main emotional phenomena in the world after theater and cinema. But this story is about people and the relationships between them, their difficulties and problems, happiness, tragedy and will. You don't need to understand football at all to watch this picture. In general, you may not know anything about this sport.
And we all have a complex attitude towards Russian football. But when I come to the stadium and see how enthusiastically people support the teams, you believe that our clubs are capable of showing serious results, and the Russian team is able to work miracles and give people emotions. Yes, it doesn't happen that often lately. But I am one of those who believes in my Russia on the eve of the 2018 World Cup, I am one of those who will cheer and scream until I am hoarse. I'm sure there are millions of us.
